Industrial Design + Nudges from Friends + a Little Humility = Fulbright Scholarship
Daniel Meza, Albert Dormans honors scholar, industrial design alum ‘20 and Fulbright scholarship recipient, has some advice for the current cohort of industrial design students. “There are a lot more opportunities for research and innovation in industrial design than you might think. For the first three years of my program it had not been on my radar that research is viable and something that you can make happen at NJIT.”
Meza was already working on experimental furniture in his studio, but wanted to explore some of his other interests. In Fall of 2018 chatting with a good friend Meza remembers her saying, “Why don’t you call Dr. Garnier?” Garnier is in biological sciences and the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying Collective Behaviors and Swarm Intelligence in natural and artificial systems. Up the right alley for students studying industrial design. Meza remembers he was hesitant, not knowing much about biology at the time, but knowing that he had an interest in working with molds and incorporating those into his furniture design. He got up his nerve and called, knowing perfectly well, as someone who had no experience in this field, he might ask some stupid questions. He did, and that was OK. Dr. Garnier invited him to grow his experimental mold in the lab, and things evolved from there.
His advisor, Dr Lorna Ronald in the Albert Dorman college was the one who suggested he apply for the Fulbright scholarship. “I talked with her – as a designer what kind of research or lab work could I do? There is a lot of overlap of things I was interested in learning – and available research opportunities as well and things that could be done in a more scientific manner,” said Meza.
“None of this would have happened if I hadn't reached out”, said Meza. “Now that everything is web based and you can branch into new directions, it’s super important in industrial design and HCAD overall, get past the insular mindset and reach out to other designers, people in other programs, lots of us are interested in other areas of work.”
And how did he even get to the point of having moldy furniture you might wonder? “It started as just an interesting visual addition to my furniture. Originally, I was going to use preserved moss, but I switched to slime mold because I liked the texture and color much better. After working in the lab with it, I realized that it would be an interesting textural exploration in furniture if I could find a way to preserve it without the block of resin...That is where I am right now - trying to find new ways to preserve the slime mold so there is more of an interaction between the user and the organism.” Just saying.
